Page 2 of My Lord Rogue
Annie’s lips twitched, suppressing a smile. “Lady St. Ervan has always been… enthusiastic in her opinions, my lady.”
“Enthusiastic,” Theo echoed, a reluctant smile touching her own lips. “A diplomatic choice of words.”
She raised her arms as Annie slipped the evening gown over her head. The gray silk whispered against her skin, cool and smooth. It was one of her better mourning gowns, the color not the stark black of deep grief but the softer gray of remembrance. It emphasized her petite frame, making her appear almost fragile, while the cut accentuated the curve of her waist and bosom.
Her fingers found her wedding band, twisting it in a nervous gesture that had become habitual as she moved to sit at the dressing table. Annie removed the hairpins and began to brush Theo’s hair, working through the curls with gentle strokes. The repetitive motion was soothing, a comfort she’d come to rely upon.
“If I may speak freely, my lady?” Annie’s voice was hesitant.
“When have you not done so?”
The maid’s reflection met her gaze in the mirror, her expression serious despite Theo’s attempt at levity. “It has been over a year. No one would think it inappropriate if you were to… consider companionship again.”
Theo’s hands clenched in her lap. “I’m aware of what society deems appropriate. I simply don’t care.”
Annie continued brushing, the soft sound of bristles through hair filling the silence. When she spoke again, her tone was careful. “Perhaps there might be a way to discourage unwanted suitors without refusing the invitation outright.”
Theo raised an eyebrow. “What do you suggest? A contagious disease? A sudden conversion to a religious order requiring vows of celibacy?”
Her maid’s lips quirked. “Nothing so dramatic, my lady. But if Lady St. Ervan and her guests were to believe you already had a… particular interest…”
The implication hung in the air between them. Theo turned to face Annie directly. “You’re suggesting I lie about having a suitor?”
“Not lie, precisely,” Annie hedged, setting down the brush. “Perhaps… create an understanding that doesn’t yet exist? Or that exists only in possibility?”
Theo turned back to the mirror, considering her reflection. The idea took root, unfurling possibilities in her mind. “It wouldneed to be someone believable. Someone respectable enough to satisfy Verity, yet conveniently absent…”
“It would allow you to attend the party without constant introductions to eligible gentlemen,” Annie pointed out, as she arranged Theo’s curls into a simple but elegant evening style.
The plan crystallized in Theo’s mind with surprising clarity. She would invent a gentleman caller—someone who had begun to pay her attention but whose courtship was not yet official enough to announce. It would explain her willingness to attend social functions again while simultaneously shielding her from unwanted advances. “I suppose it wouldn’t be scandalous to stop wearing mourning garb.”
The thought brought a twinge of guilt, as if removing the outward symbols of her grief somehow diminished Charles’s memory. But beneath the guilt was something else—a whisper of relief. The gray had become a prison of sorts, a visible reminder to everyone she encountered that she was damaged, broken, incomplete.
“The blue silk would be lovely for the house party,” Annie suggested carefully. “The one with the ivory lace at the sleeves. It always brought out your eyes.”
Theo nodded slowly. “Yes, I think perhaps it’s time.” Her gaze in the mirror grew distant, then sharpened with sudden calculation. “This fictional suitor will need a name, a history…”
Her fingers, which had been fidgeting with her wedding band, stilled. For the first time in months, her mind was engaged with something other than grief—a puzzle to solve, a character to create.
“My lady seems almost enthusiastic,” Annie observed, a note of pleased surprise in her voice.
Theo met her maid’s gaze in the mirror, her mood shifting from resignation to a hint of mischief. “Don’t mistake necessity for enthusiasm. This is merely self-preservation.”
But even as she said it, Theo felt a spark of something long dormant flickering to life within her. Not happiness exactly, but perhaps its distant cousin, purpose.
The candleson Theo’s desk cast a warm glow across the parchment before her, the blank expanse awaiting words that refused to come easily. Supper had been a solitary affair, as usual, though tonight her mind had been unusually active, turning over the seeds of the plan she and Annie had discussed. Now, seated at the small rosewood desk that had been her mother’s, Theo dipped her quill into the inkwell and held it suspended, watching as a single drop of ink fell back into the glass vessel. How did one craft a man from nothing but imagination and necessity?
“My dearest Verity,” she wrote at last, the nib scratching softly against the parchment. The familiar salutation flowed easily enough, but she paused again when confronted with the body of the letter.
The house was utterly quiet around her. The servants had retired to their quarters, and the only sounds were the occasional settling of timber and the distant rattle of a carriage passing on the street outside. She needed to accept the invitation, that much was clear. But how to introduce her fictional admirer? Too eager, and Verity would be suspicious, too vague, and her friend would still attempt to introduce her to eligible bachelors.
Leaning back in her chair, she set down the pen and thought aloud. “He must be believable. Respectable enough to satisfy Verity, yet distant enough to explain his absence.”
Her gaze drifted to the window, where the night pressed against the glass like black velvet. Beyond lay London with its secrets and possibilities. Somewhere in that darkness were gentlemen exactly like the one she needed to invent—men of title and means, of excellent reputation and measured charm. Men who would, in reality, expect a young widow to surrender her grief and open herself to new attachments.
The thought made her stomach tighten. No real man could replace Charles. No flesh and blood suitor would understand that her heart had been buried along with her husband.
He should be titled, or perhaps not. Would Verity look him up? Oh, this plotting was more complicated than she’d imagined.